


the actors

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [15]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Acting, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Team Bonding, pure self-indulgent fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 22:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: There's nothing more entertaining on a hot summer day than acting out a Shakespeare play with good friends, especially when it's one of the comedies. In the middle of Wyoming, with nothing else to do, the Suitcase Family decides that Much Ado About Nothing is right up their alley. It turns out that they were right.





	the actors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kemara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemara/gifts), [barley013](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barley013/gifts).



> Gift for Kemara, barley013, and my dear sister, all of whom thought that the Midsummer Night chapter would have been even better if it was Much Ado About Nothing. THIS GOT LONG AS FUCK SO PREPARE YOURSELVES. There’s too much good shit in this play, I was fighting with every line because I wanted to put it all in!!! UGH. I need more words!

“It turns out that Newt has more No-Maj books than we thought,” Jacob announces. 

It’s midafternoon, and for once everyone is in the same place. Tina and Queenie are playing a highly competitive game of pick-up sticks, which may be the only game at which Queenie’s Legilimency doesn’t put her at unfair advantage. Credence is supposed to be turning a teacup into a can—an easy Transfiguration; one that Graves could probably do in his sleep since it’s one vessel into another—but so far all he’s managed to do is turn the cup into a cup made of tin. Snowshoe’s gone off to Laramie to trade in his wand cores. And Newt and Jacob were in the suitcase pruning some rather nasty mobile weeds, but now they’re standing there with near-identical looks of excited mischief on their faces. 

“What did you turn up?” Tina asks, looking up from her turn.

Credence, biting his lip in concentration, traces the complex pattern in the air over the tin teacup with Graves’ wand, and mutters, “Muto Scaphius!” The cup shivers and shatters like glass, leaving small tin shards all over the ground. 

“…we’ll come back to that later,” Graves decides. “Jacob?”

“You wanted Shakespeare,” Jacob says, tossing the book to Graves, “you got Shakespeare.”

“Much Ado About Nothing?” Credence asks, looking over Graves’ shoulder.

“…I am not playing Don John,” Graves says. 

Casting gets severely complicated, because there are many crowd scenes, and everyone ends up double-cast and sometimes playing more than one role in a scene. At Graves’ description of Beatrice, Tina seizes the role gleefully, and because he’s doing the casting Graves calls the opposing role of Benedick. Queenie plays the innocent Hero, and Newt plays the blundering Claudio. Credence takes on Don Pedro and Jacob lights on Don John with delight. The secondary roles are passed around and Jacob takes Dogberry, because he’s a comic role, and Tina decides to play his long-suffering deputy Verges. Newt offers to play Leonato, and Graves decides to tackle the role of Antonio since no one else wants it. Queenie decides on the villainous Conrad, and Credence takes the serving-woman Margaret. With three roles remaining, Credence gets Balthasar, Jacob gets Ursula, and Graves gets Borachio. 

Newt makes for an oddly regal Leonato, assuming an air of nobility as he opens the play. “I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon comes this night to Messina,” he says. He and the messenger exchange news, and Tina-as-Beatrice breaks in to ask about her Signor Mountanto, Benedick. 

“In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one,” Tina reads, and glances at Graves, eyes dancing. “So that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature!”

“It’s like this role was written for him,” Credence says. 

Of course, moments later, Credence has to jump into character, because the rest of the cast has entered, and there’s work to do. Newt has to double up as Claudio, Jacob enters as Don John, and Credence is left to manage being Don Pedro and Balthasar at the same time. 

Credence, like Newt, affects airs when he delivers his lines. “Good Signor Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble,” he says, pitching his voice lower and standing with a slight swagger. “The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.”

It takes Graves a second to figure it out, but then—“Are you imitating me?”

Queenie bursts into laughter. “He is!”

“You insolent rascal,” Graves says, smiling. Credence winks at him.

Tina clears her throat loudly and skips two dozen lines. “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick: nobody marks you.”

“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?” Graves asks, without missing a beat. He improvises, taking Tina’s hand and lightly kissing the back of it. 

She snatches her hand away and grins at him, eyes flicking to her book for the next line. “Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick?”

They exchange the rest of their banter with the same kind of rapidity as if they were dueling each other. It’s _fun_ , throwing wit at Tina and having her clash against him perfectly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last forever: they’re cut off by the rest of the scene, and then Tina has to exit and Graves is left alone with Newt. Newt makes for a good Claudio—a little dreamy and distant, as if he’s playing himself—and Graves finds himself reining in the edge to some of Benedick’s sharper lines. 

Credence turns back into the scene as Don Pedro, playing the role of consoling mentor for the pining Newt-as-Claudio. Graves gets to deliver Benedick’s short monologue on the merits of women, which has Tina and Queenie both rolling their eyes at him. The final lines had been nearly his personal motto for so long that they come out a bit too heartfelt: “Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.”

“I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love,” Credence says, and flutters his lashes.

“Oh, _Merlin’s beard_ , can you two stop flirting for _two minutes_?” Tina demands.

Events move apace, with Claudio resolving to court Hero and Don Pedro promising to aid him in his goal. Antonio and Leonato’s brief scene moves by quickly, and Graves begins to get the feeling that, between them, he and Newt have gotten the lion’s share of dialogue. But then it’s Queenie and Jacob’s turn, and it is _delightful_ to watch them.

Jacob plays the would-be-tragic and self-admittedly wicked Don John to the hilt, and Queenie takes her cues from him to become the sycophantic Conrad. “I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain,” Jacob says darkly. His normal pleasant attitude is gone, buried perfectly under the veil of Don John. 

Graves is glad to play off of him as Borachio, the other conspirator, who brings news of the intended match of Claudio and Hero. Together, they plot to cross Claudio and bring him to grief. It leaves a slightly bad taste in Graves’ mouth, playing the villain, but it is only a play. 

Apparently he’s just going to be in every single damn scene, because now he’s to be Antonio again. There is discussion of marriage and love. Queenie gets one line exactly, because Hero is modest and quiet, but Tina rattles off her dozens of sharply comic lines with clear excitement. “For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave!”

“Hear her, Newt,” Jacob says with a grin. “Wait until you get out of the first suit with Tina!”

“I don’t think we ever _got_ a first suit,” Tina says, looking up from her book.

Newt shrugs. “I do think that chasing creatures all over New York made for a pretty fantastical Scotch jig,” he says. “It was hot and hasty, anyway.”

The entire rest of the cast enters and they’re back to frantically covering parts. Credence plays gallant Don Pedro, with Queenie-as-Hero on his arm; and then he has to deliver half a scene’s lines to himself as both Balthasar and Margaret. “Well, I would you did like me. So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill-qualities. Which is one? I say my prayers aloud—wait, can anyone actually tell which is which or am I just monologuing?”

Jacob, as Ursula, winks coquettishly at Graves playing Antonio. “Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? can virtue hide itself?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Graves says dryly, and steps smartly back into the role of Benedick. 

Don John and Borachio, by accident, convince Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero in truth, rather than to get her near to Claudio. “If only she was as good at reading minds as I am!” Queenie says. 

“The play would end too soon,” Tina points out. 

Graves and Credence get to have a long conversation as Benedick and Don Pedro. It’s rather fun, playing off of each other as comrades in arms and best friends without the romantic overtones. Newt elbows Tina when she rolls her eyes because Credence has thrown an arm over Graves’ shoulders. 

“The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you: the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you,” Credence says severely. 

Tina is still making faces at them, so Graves looks right at her when he says, “O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!” He tears into the rest of Benedick’s monologue on all Beatrice’s terrible qualities with enthusiasm, Tina getting steadily more and more outraged as he goes on. “—so, indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her!”

Credence bursts into laughter. “Look, here she comes!” he exclaims, pointing. Tina looks absolutely murderous. Queenie muffles laughter behind her hands, Jacob grins ear to ear, and even Newt smiles slyly. Graves raises his eyebrows and holds out a hand, which Tina takes with bad grace.

The play proceeds as it should. Upon the exit of the two quarrelers, Credence calls his counsel of Newt and Queenie (as Don Pedro, Leonato and Claudio, and Hero, respectively) to help him bring the quarrelers together. He outlines his plans with roguish delight, and the others join him quickly. 

There’s only one mild break in the action, as Credence says of Benedick, “Thus far can I praise him; he is of a noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty,” and looks at Graves obliquely. 

Tina makes an outraged choking noise and clutches her hair. “ _Stop it_!”

In the very next scene, Graves has to get over his disgust of villains again, as he and Jacob play out the machinations of Don John and Borachio. Borachio will seduce Hero’s maid and make it look as though Hero is unfaithful to Claudio, while Don John brings Claudio and Don Pedro to spy on the proceedings. It’s a vile plan, as Newt mutters disconsolately, and it’s clear that everyone has a rather low opinion of Don John and his conspirators. Still, Jacob is doing an excellent job.

Graves gets a very long soliloquy on the failings of men in love, and when he begins everyone laughs. “I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by failing in love,” he says. He breaks character to say, “I never actually scorned any of you!”

“The most legendary confirmed bachelor in New York, everyone!” Tina says with a flourish. 

All Graves can do is take an ironic bow and carry on, because she’s right. He doesn’t have much more to say, honestly, because he has to take cover as Benedick while the other men—plotting to get him with Beatrice—enter to fool him. Credence is Don Pedro again, but he also has to be Balthasar, and that’s when things take a turn for the strange. Graves expects that Credence will simply speak Balthasar’s song, but he doesn’t. He studies the page for a moment, mouthing the words and tapping a rhythm on the page, before launching into an actual song. 

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never.” Credence is looking only at the page, following along to some melody that Graves doesn’t know. He breaks a few notes and falters on a few syllables, but his voice is otherwise a clear tenor. “Then sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into ‘Hey nonny, nonny.’”

Graves looks around at the others, wondering if he’s just started to hallucinate, but the others are definitely hearing this. Tina is staring at Credence like she’s never seen him before. Jacob’s jaw is practically on the ground. Queenie’s hands are over her mouth and she looks like she’s going to cry. Newt is listening with his head cocked, wearing a thoughtful expression. 

“Sing no more ditties, sing no more, of dumps so dull and heavy; the fraud of men was ever so, since summer first was leafy,” Credence goes on. He’s gaining confidence as he goes, fitting the words to whatever melody he knows. He looks like he’s somewhere else. “Then sigh not so, ladies, sigh not so, men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never.”

There’s a moment of total silence. 

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Tina says softly. 

Credence looks up from the book, visibly startled by his audience. “I’m not very good,” he says, a flush rising in his cheeks. “It’s just some old hymn…”

“That was beautiful, Credence,” Queenie whispers. She discreetly dabs away tears. Graves wonders what she heard inside his head. 

Jacob shakes his head. “Kid, that was pretty good.”

“I’m all right, but you’re much better. Would you mind very much trying to sing the Occamies to sleep?” Newt asks. Credence laughs at that, and the moment passes. Graves is glad: his voice might have cracked if he’d have had to say anything. He’s fairly sure that Credence’s singing is the best thing he’s ever heard.

The next two scenes pass in fine fashion without any interruptions. The whole household is in on the conspiracy to bring Beatrice and Benedick together, and through eavesdropping and not-so-subtle conversations convince each that the other is in love, forcing them to accept the truth of their feelings. It’s so familiar that Graves feels great sympathy for poor Benedick, and even Tina admits, “Okay. You and Credence _might_ have been justified. _Might_.”

Of course the play all goes wrong, as Jacob comes on as Don John to somberly inform Claudio that his Hero has been unfaithful to him. Credence performs a righteously enraged Don Pedro and Graves has a suspicion that he’s being mocked again, but doesn’t say anything because it is good. Apparently inspired by Jacob and Credence, Newt rises to the occasion as a despairing Claudio who rivals Romeo or Hamlet in melancholy. 

There’s an abrupt about-face in mood as the constables of the Watch enter, Dogberry in the lead. “Are you good men and true?” Jacob demands as the good man. 

“Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul,” Tina says, rolling her eyes in a rather droll fashion at the others. 

Jacob points to the sky. “Nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the prince's watch!”

After much wit and banter amongst the watch, Dogberry and Verges take their leave as Borachio and Conrad—Graves and Queenie—take their turn. Graves begins: “Conrad, I say!”

Queenie looks up at him. “Here, man; I am at thy elbow.”

“Mass, and my elbow itched; I thought there would a scab follow,” Graves says, fighting a smile.

“I will owe thee an answer for that!” Queenie exclaims, mock offended. She pokes him in the ribs and he gives in and laughs. 

“Stand thee close, then,” Graves says. He slings an arm around her slim shoulders and pulls her in. They deliver the rest of the scene like that, Queenie snug against Graves’ side. 

The Watch, led by Jacob's ridiculous Dogberry, arrests them at the end of the scene for plotting treachery, and it’s the turn of the ladies. Queenie floats into the guileless role of Hero, while Credence rattles off lines as serving-woman Margaret, Jacob takes a break from lines as Ursula, and Tina plays the lovelorn Beatrice. They’re doing well—this seems by far a popular play, and Graves thinks wryly that it’s because the damn thing sounds so much like their real lives. Plots to bring oblivious lovers together? Machinations by a mustache-twirling villain? Chaos, effrontery, and misunderstandings? It’s so familiar that it’s ridiculous.

Newt can barely keep a straight face through the next scene, as Jacob and Tina compete against each other in sheer buffoonery as Dogberry and Verges. “I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I,” Tina proclaims solemnly. 

Somehow Jacob survives the word salad of the next sentence: “Comparisons are odorous: palabras, neighbor Verges.”

“Neighbors, you are tedious,” Newt says, visibly restraining a laugh. 

Jacob rounds on him with deep pomposity. “It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor duke's officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship!”

Newt bites his lip, holding himself together, and finally says in a slightly choked voice, “All thy tediousness on me, ah?”

“Yea, an 'twere a thousand pound more than 'tis; for I hear as good exclamation on your worship as of any man in the city; and though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it!” Jacob exclaims. He thumps his chest for emphasis, looking noble.

“And so am I,” Tina rushes to reassure. 

The outcome of this is that Leonato is made aware of the prisoners that the Watch has taken, but he dismisses them out of hand because there is a wedding to be had. And this is where things get more than a little ugly, in the play. Graves—who’s aware of what’s coming—and Queenie—who’s reading his mind—exchange a nervous look as the scene begins.

“You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady,” Credence says, in a creaky voice as Friar Francis.

Newt’s brow is furrowed. “No,” he says. There is a brief back-and-forth as the confused officiants try to sort out what is happening. And then Newt delivers Claudio’s condemnation of the apparently-faithless Hero. “Would you not swear, all you that see her, that she were a maid, by these exterior shows? But she is none: she knows the heat of a luxurious bed; her blush is guiltiness, not modesty!”

In the interest of preserving the sudden seriousness, Graves steps in as Leonato. “What do you mean, my lord?”

“Not to be married, not to knit my soul to an approved wanton!” Newt could be Claudio, with his frenetic fury and confused accusations. It’s impressive.  
Leonato tries to save the situation, but Don Pedro’s affirmation of Claudio is resoundingly firm. Backed by such authority, there is really nothing to be done. “This looks not like a nuptial,” Graves says, as Benedick, the only man who did not see Don John’s evidence.

Queenie, eyes brimming with real tears, cries, “True! O God!”

Newt clutches at Tina for support, the melodrama somehow perfect. “Leonato, stand I here? Is this the prince? is this the prince's brother? Is this face Hero’s? are our eyes our own?” 

The accusers exit, and shortly thereafter the traumatized Hero and her enraged father exit, leaving Beatrice and Benedick alone at last. Graves turns to Tina and out of the corner of his eye sees everyone else step back. Tina’s staring off somewhere past the fire, and jumps a little when Graves asks, “Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?”

Tina wipes her eyes. “Yea, and I will weep a while longer.”

Graves lays a hand on her shoulder. “I will not desire that.” He tries to maintain the hopeful attitude of Benedick, striving to be the man Beatrice deserves, all while trying to solve the situation. Of course Benedick puts his foot in his mouth when Beatrice says she has no friend to right the wrong done to Hero: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?”

“Here we go,” Credence stage-whispers.

Jacob shakes his head. “This is too bizarre.”

“As strange as the thing I know not!” Tina exclaims with a wry smile. She sobers, to say, “It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing.”

Graves summons up as much of the awe he’d felt the first time he’d actually figured out how he felt about Credence. “By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me,” he says. 

Tina shakes her head violently. “Do not swear, and eat it!”

“I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat it that says I love not you.”

“Will you not eat your word?” Tina pleads. 

“With no sauce that can be devised to it,” Graves says, “I protest I love thee.”

It’s a little nerve-wracking, even knowing how comfortable they are with each other, to see Tina turn and look at him with frustrated longing. “Why, then, God forgive me!”

“What offence, sweet Beatrice?”

“You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you!” Tina sounds so aggrieved that Graves is reminded of himself. Did she feel this way about falling in love with Newt? If he knows her at all, she probably did.

He maintains what he can of how he feels around Credence. “And do it with all thy heart.”

Tina’s shoulders slump and she looks at him tragically. “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”

There’s a really awkward moment where Graves is fairly sure Tina is about to just go for it and kiss him. But then she glances past his shoulder, at where Newt is. Oh. Right. Graves looks to his left, where Credence is watching him with raised eyebrows. The young man makes a small shooing gesture, as if to tell him to do it. Tina’s got a determined expression when he looks back at her, and then pecks him very quickly on the lips. 

“Are you all right with this?” Graves hears Jacob ask Credence in an undertone.

“He doesn’t like women, Jacob,” Credence says patiently. “Besides, it’s _Tina_.”

“I heard that,” Tina says.

Newt sounds like he’s smiling. “You’re proving him right, you know.”

Graves clears his throat. “Come, bid me do any thing for thee.”

Tina’s eyes narrow and she looks more like herself. “Kill Claudio.”

Of course, Graves as Benedick has to try to calm things down. But Tina gets more and more angry as the scene progresses, refusing to be calmed. It all culminates in Beatrice’s best lines in the play.

“Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man!” Tina rails, glaring at all four men like they’ve personally offended her. “What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour—O God, that I were a man! _I would eat his heart in the market-place_!”

“Remind me never to make her mad,” Credence says, barely audible, hiding behind Newt.

In the end, of course, Benedick agrees to challenge Claudio to the death. In the very next scene, Dogberry and Verges interrogate Borachio and Conrad about their wicked schemes. Then Leonato and Antonio confront Don Pedro and Claudio, and upon their exit Benedick (still presumed to be uninvolved) enters. Graves steels himself: everyone is so invested that this might be difficult.

And it _is_ difficult. Graves has to challenge Newt to a duel for Hero’s honor, and then Newt is beset by the true story of what he has done. Everyone believes Hero to be dead of a broken heart, and Leonato demands that Claudio make things right by marrying his brother’s daughter. Things are coming to a head now, the play accelerating toward the end. Claudio and Don Pedro visit the church to mourn Hero, and then it’s time for the second wedding. 

The ladies all enter masked, so that their identities can’t be seen, which will prevent anything going wrong too soon. Graves notices Tina and Credence whispering at each other while he and Newt spar verbally, Jacob providing for Leonato and all the other characters because Newt is so busy with Claudio. Queenie waits patiently until the moment is right.

“Give me your hand: before this holy friar,” Newt says, offering a hand to Queenie. “I am your husband, if you like of me.”

Queenie smiles very sweetly and takes his hand. “When I lived, I was your other wife: and when you loved, you were my other husband.”

Newt gasps. “Another Hero!”

“Nothing certainer!” Queenie says. “One Hero died defiled, but I do live!”

That thread tied up, it’s the turn of Benedick and Beatrice to repair their end. “Soft and fair, friar,” Graves says. “Which is Beatrice?

Credence grins at Tina, then looks at Graves. “I answer to that name. What is your will?”

“…you two are _incorrigible_ ,” Graves says, as Tina and Credence laugh. "Tina, didn't you want us to _stop_ flirting?"

"I'm not reading this end with anyone but Newt," Tina says firmly, and waves at them both. "Carry on!"

Of course Beatrice and Benedick try at the last minute to deny their affections, but all their friends crowd around to shout them down. Jests are made and evidence in the form of notes and sonnets is presented. Though Tina was a wonderful Beatrice, it’s much nicer to be looking into Credence’s eyes and speaking his lines. 

“Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity,” Graves says, offering a hand.

Credence takes it, but he still looks pert. “I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.”

Graves takes one look at the next line and decides to be as ridiculous and reckless as this play demands. “Peace! I will stop your mouth,” he says, and pulls Credence into a dip like they’re dancing to kiss him. Credence yelps and grabs his shoulders to avoid falling, but he’s laughing, and so is everyone else, when they come up for air. And that’s the end of the play, because there’s no coming back now that Newt has utterly given up on being Claudio and Queenie is declaiming at length how much easier things would be if Hero had been a Legilimens.

“Well, that’s one youthful dream fulfilled,” Tina says, as she rejoins all the copied books into one. 

“What is?” Newt asks.

Tina shrugs. “Look, I had a thing for Graves when I was a Junior Auror.”

“I don’t blame you,” Credence says. 

Queenie sits down, elbows on knees and chin on hands. “Of course you wouldn’t, honey.”

Jacob sits down beside her. “I don’t, either. If I swung a little different…”

Graves sighs. There are many days when he thinks these are the best friends he’s ever had, and then things like this happens and he regrets many of his choices. “Are you all really doing this?”

“Don’t play romantic heroes if you don’t want this kind of treatment,” Tina says cheerfully. 

“What killed your ‘thing’?” Credence asks, sprawling prone on the grass beside Graves. 

“Well, this one came along, and he’s much nicer,” Tina says, putting her head on Newt’s shoulder.

Newt puts an arm around her. “Are you sure it had nothing to do with you-know-who?”

Tina makes a slight face. “That did put a lot of things into a new light. Like the mustard.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that,” Newt says, cringing a little.

Graves exchanges looks with everyone else. They’re all lost. “Mustard?” he asks for them all.

“I had some on my lip, because _someone_ ran square into me while I was eating a hot dog,” Tina says, side-eyeing Newt. 

He doesn’t look remotely abashed. “I was chasing the Niffler!”

“You looked like a blue streak of lightning, running up the steps,” Credence says. Right: they’d been within twenty feet of each other. What a strange thought.

Newt smiles at him. “If only we’d known then,” he says. 

“Yeah, and I was right on the other side of the doors,” Jacob says. “Still the best day of my life.”

“The mustard?” Graves prompts.

Tina looks infinitely disturbed. Queenie bursts into giggles as Tina says, “Um, the, um, the other you? He walked right up to me and used his—your—whatever—handkerchief to wipe the stuff off.”

“He was so _poised_ , I thought he did that kind of thing all the time,” Newt says. 

“I would not ever do that to one of my subordinates,” Graves says flatly. What kind of damage did Grindelwald do to his reputation, anyway? “And I would not do it to any of you.”

“Um,” Credence starts, raising a hand.

“Not even you.”

“It felt so strange!” Tina says. “Because you _wouldn’t_ , but then again it was like having fifty dreams come true at the same time so I was…distracted.”

Queenie smiles benevolently over at Credence and Graves, who’ve somehow come to be joined at the hip again. “I think we’ve got a lot of dreams coming true right now,” she says. 

“Which makes this a comedy, you know,” Graves says. 

“Our lives ain’t very funny,” Jacob points out. 

Graves shakes his head. “Comedy doesn’t mean funny. It means a happy ending. The unwed are wed, the sad become merry, the separate are reunited.”

“I like that,” Credence murmurs, resting his head against Graves’ leg. 

“We’ll all live happily ever after,” Newt says with a faint smile. 

Maybe they will. Lovers blundering through a world that’s doing its level best to tear them apart, surrounded by strange situations and fantastical beasts and magic…it does sound like something Shakespeare would enjoy. Well, if Graves is willing to believe that there’s some pen guiding this story along to its conclusion, then this scene alone should be enough to convince him that things will be all right. The unwed will be wed, the sad will become merry, the separate will all be reunited. Maybe tomorrow won’t be a tragedy. He doesn’t normally, but right now—Graves is willing to hope. They’ll all live happily ever after.

Strike up, pipers.

**Author's Note:**

> The term “word salad” is a loan from German psychologists. It’s early 1890s, maybe early 1900s, and is definitely attested in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1904. Assuming a reasonable level of education and some degree of the normal spread of slang, I find it appropriate to describe Dogberry’s drivel in-text as “word salad”.
> 
> I put so much effort into finding a tune to which Credence might set “Sigh No More”. The poem is trochaic meter (TEENage MUtant NINja TURtles, see [this xkcd comic](https://xkcd.com/856/) for further entertaining details), which is…remarkably hard to find hymns for. Most are in iambic pentameter (two HOUSEholds BOTH aLIKE in DIGniTY / in FAIR verOna WHERE we LAY our SCENE—the meter in which Shakespeare wrote much of his poetry). I ended up picking one that comes with the following text: 
> 
>  “O God, my refuge, hear my cries, / Behold my flowing tears; / For earth and hell my hurt devise, / And triumph in my fears.” Appropriate, no? Awkwardly, a variant text I saw begins as follows: “In mercy, not in wrath, rebuke / Thy feeble worm, my God! / My spirit dreads thine angry look, / And trembles at thy rod.” I mean, yeah. Can you imagine which one Credence was probably singing in church, versus what he wanted to be singing?  
>    
> [You can download a MIDI file here that will give you an idea of the tune.](http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/o/g/m/ogmrefug.htm)
> 
> So basically this is historically inaccurate, but I said “fuck it” and just rolled with what I had. The specific tune is from John Chetham’s 1718 Psalmody, but the text is derived from Psalm 55. Nothing about this would have carried over well. For one thing, it’s written for the Church of England, not for American Protestants. For another, [the latest edition on IMSLP](http://imslp.org/wiki/A_Book_of_Psalmody_\(Chetham%2C_John\)) is dated to 1868. In England. But goddammit this is the only tune I could find and it sounds really appropriate for the text of “Sigh No More”, so FORGET HISTORY I’M WRITING WHAT I WANT.
> 
> (oh i am so ashamed)


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